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Truly Free Film

Should Museums Ban Films?

By Ben Kalina

I spent much of the past 4 years directing Shored Up, a film about coastal development, sea level rise and the science and policy debates surrounding these issues.  It was a long process with many twists, the biggest of which came when Superstorm Sandy hit and brought a dramatic new context to the film.

North Carolina figures prominently in Shored Up, initially as a contrast between the state’s forward-looking coastal development policies and the slippery slope of groins, jetties and beach replenishment in other states like New Jersey.  But this contrast was turned on its head as the North Carolina Legislature started to reverse many of these laws in 2012.

XKalina_ShoredUp2

As a result of North Carolina’s role in the film I’ve been actively planning a screening tour across the state this coming January.  It was to kick off with an event in Wilmington and culminate with a showing and panel discussion at a Science Café event in the North Carolina Natural Science Museum.  All seemed to be going well and this was shaping up to be a great opportunity to reach press and politicians with the science and policy issues that the film covers.

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Truly Free Film

10 More Embarrassing Brushes With Celebrities

Last week we gave you “10 Embarrassing Brushes with Celebrities” by Jack Lechner. Today, Miranda Bailey provides us with ten more of her own. It’s helpful to be reminded that even producers struggle with this.
 
by Miranda Bailey

1.) In 1996 I was invited to a party in Aspen hosted by Kevin Costner. I had lived in Aspen a year before but now I lived in Hollywood trying to make my way through the smog as an actress. When I arrived I looked around and found someone that I recognized. I went up to her and said “Hey! How are you?”- she said she was doing great. I asked her how the Howling Wolf was doing. (This was a restaurant I was a waitress at in Aspen the year before.)  She said “I don’t know what you mean.”?  So I reminded her “Didn’t we wait tables together at the Howling Wolf”? – “No”. She said. “I’m a model”…  “Oh… how’s that going”? I asked, assuming it was something like wearing a fur hat in the Aspen information guide that got handed out to tourists. “It’s going well”. She smiled politely and walked away. My friend then decked me in the chest and said “I cannot believe you just told Rachel Hunter that you thought she was a waitress at the Howling Wolf. You are such a douche”….

2.) In 1997 I acted in a play called Mainliner in a tiny dump on Fountain Ave. I became friends with the directors girlfriend Kerry. We hung out here and there, she was an LA local who knew a bunch of celebs. One night we went to Tobey Maguire’s birthday party, Leonardo DiCaprio was there and I met him briefly. They ALL knew Kerry. I was her wing woman. It was awesome. About six months later, the play was over and I wasn’t seeing Kerry much anymore. But I got invited to a premiere on the Paramount lot. There was Tobey Maguire. I went up to him and said “Hey, I’m Miranda Bailey. I’m good friends with Kerry. We met at your birthday party”.- “Kerry who?” he said…”Um, Kerry…..” but for the life of me, at that moment I couldn’t remember her last name. “Kerry….um, something like a fish for a last name”? He looked at me like I was a pathetic loser ” Yeah”, he said “You’re not that good friends with someone if you don’t know their last name”. . I guess he was right.

3.) In 1998 I was crossing Beverly Blvd. As I waited at the light. I noticed this guy. Where did I know him from? Summer Camp? “Hey, is your name David”? He looked annoyed and pushed the walk button harder as if that would make the light turn and didn’t answer me. “Did you go to Anderson Camp in Colorado?”… the light turned. He walked faster than a pregnant woman headed towards the bathroom.

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Truly Free Film

10 Embarrassing Brushes With Celebrities

By Jack Lechner

1. 1985. I’m taking the bus from my job in Manhattan to my shared walkup in Hoboken. The guy who plunks down across from me is none other than John Sayles, one of my heroes on Earth. I know I should say something to him, something clever and charming – but I can’t, because I begin to shake uncontrollably at the very sight of him. I’m still shaking when he gets off the bus in Hoboken.

2. 1987. I’m on an awards jury in LA. Before the meeting starts, someone mentions seeing a crappy summer movie. “Have you ever seen SUMMER LOVERS?” I ask. “It couldn’t possibly be worse than that.” Right on cue, a man sits down to join us. It’s Randal Kleiser – the director of SUMMER LOVERS. (He’s surprisingly gracious about it.)

3. 1987. I watch a brilliant short film from Columbia University, by a young director named Nicole Holofcener.

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Truly Free Film

Professional

by John Sayles

Sayles1

            The first storytelling I got to do was as a novelist in the 1970s, and in those days there was a phenomenon known as the ‘vanity press’.   Today we would call it ‘self-publishing’ with little hint of derision, but back then it was considered something lesser, tacky in a way, amateurs so deluded about their lack of talent they ponied up and paid somebody to print their work and then gave it away as presents to their friends.  There were exceptions made for ideologues– medical, philosophical or political– who were too far out for even the most adventurous publishers, but though their plight was understood these people were considered to be mere pamphleteers rather than ‘professional writers’.  A professional writer didn’t pay to be published, and in many cases got an advance against royalties from their publisher.  My first advance for a novel was for $2,500 in 1975, when the minimum wage was slightly over a dollar an hour.  Two years ago I got a $3,000 advance for my novel A Moment in the Sun.  Minimum wage, thankfully, has advanced more steadily than my earning power as a novelist.  But it was still a big deal to

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Truly Free Film

Why A Film Starring Just One Person: ME!

by  Ian Delaney

It all began, as most things seem to in an actor’s life, with a touch of vanity. I have been writing short films and scenes for years as an effort to hire myself and friends when the established Industry hadn’t yet. What I discovered is that my talent for writing, meager as it may be, lies entirely in writing great material for other people. Looking back on the body of work my friends and I produced, the roles I wrote for myself were “poor players” indeed, whereas the roles I wrote for my friends held all the comedy, all the drama, and therefore helped propel their careers far further and faster than my own.

This realization led me to an important question: how can I write better stories and characters for myself?

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Truly Free Film

The WASTELANDER PANDA Saga! Part 5. Release

by Kirsty Stark (Producer), Ella Macintyre (PMD) and Victoria Cocks (Writer/Director)

Part 5. Release: Wrap-Up & What’s Next

Our final step in this stage of the Wastelander Panda journey was to release the films.  We did this in three stages – a preview at the SXSW Film Festival in March, two back-to-back screenings at a local cinema in Adelaide on May 27th, and an online release that same evening. 

We had different reasons and goals for each of these three steps:

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Issues and Actions

FILMONOMICS: The Manufacturing of Desire

By Colin Brown

Want to know why the film business is such a tough nut to crack? Then listen to Erik Feig, president of production at Lionsgate, explaining to a WGA West audience last year how even the largest independent film studio in North America has to tap dance between two polar sets of interests:

“Every single movie that we make has to be sold twice. First, on a pre-sale basis, to a bunch of independent foreign distributors who are worried about losing money. And second, to a consumer who wants to see something that they haven’t seen before. Trying to find the right project and the right package that can satisfy both of those moments in time, separated by eighteen months of hopefully good execution, is really, really hard.”

It is an in-built tension familiar to anyone who has tried to pitch a film project. Each year, the box office tells us that audiences crave what’s new. Every film festival, movie market or project forum is another reminder that the industry gatekeepers are at their most comfortable with the tried and tested. Consider this year’s Toronto International Film Festival: for all the exciting artistry on display this past week, the big-money distribution deals still lasered in on crowd-pleasing, films featuring celebrity actors. And when the American Film Market swings around again in November, it will still be broad-based action films that that galvanizes the global market – even as the media itself rhapsodizes about the ground-breaking awards contenders that are bound to thrill ticket-buyers with their inventive storytelling and fresh faces.

How one sets about resolving cinema’s conflicting impulses and inherent contradictions is at the heart of “film packaging.” The most skilled packagers are those who can turn dreams into solid investment propositions by dressing them up in just the right combination of bold new fashions and sensible clothes. While landing that irresistible A-list cast and top-notch director will go along way to propelling a particular project down the industry runway, star-names are only one part of a complex calculus involving many other moving parts. Which is just as well, since the likes of Brad Pitt can only sashay to so many projects at once.

Starting with this initial overview on packaging practices, filmonomics will attempt over the coming weeks to dissect and decipher the way that film industry professionals evaluate projects at varying budget levels and genre tropes. This is intended not so much as a check-list of essential ingredients – if reliable film financing recipes exist at all, they are subject to constant revisions and multiple interpretations – but as a guiding set of principles for generating industrial heat.

So much of packaging is attitudinal, anyway. In drawing up his own essential list of twenty tips for packaging your project successfully, producer Ted Hope talks at great length about how filmmakers should go about attracting talents and building consensus around their projects, not who or what they need in order to juice up their market appeal. From his years of experience , packaging seems to come down to a delicate balancing act between patient professionalism and urgent calls to action. The trick, he says, is in making your project feel inevitable in industry eyes.

A real-time appreciation of what the industry is looking for in terms of material, which names they consider are worth banking on, and how much they are willing to pay for those combinations, is certainly crucial. But you won’t be able to determine such sweet-spots by simply looking at past box office performance – or VOD numbers if you can find them. As this collection of stunning infographics illustrates, you can use data to capture any number of statistical correlations in endlessly vivid ways. This rear-view mirror on marketplace can help set a baseline for commercial expectations, but it won’t necessarily improve your profitability picture on the long road ahead. For one thing as Disney’s vice-president of casting Randi Hiller reminded that same WGAW packaging seminar, “the temperature on things changes very quickly.” For another, yesterday’s star attraction may have now soared beyond the financial reach of most independent producers. Here’s Hiller again, drawing on her previous background as an independent casting agent:

“It’s always been, when you are casting a small movie, about getting someone to agree with your bet. Everyone is always chasing the established person. But what are your chances of getting them? Romantic comedies are incredibly hard to attach people to because everyone wants Reese Witherspoon and she’s getting $20 million a studio film. Why is she going to work on a $1 million romantic comedy? It’s just not going to happen. The only way to get a romantic comedy of the ground is with some actor who doesn’t ever get a chance to do that and is coming up the ranks.”

Identifying those next generation actors is its own exercise in educated guesswork and inside information. At the time of that panel last summer, everyone agreed that British actor Tom Hardy was the flavor of the month based on a bravura performance in the little-seen festival film Bronson, and supporting roles in films such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Inception. His stunning breakthrough as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises had yet to be seen publicly, although it was no doubt reverberating on the industry grapevine. All this was more than enough to anoint Hardy as cinema’s hottest prospect, even though his accumulated credits would not supported that status. As Hiller observed:

“The interesting thing is that Tom Hardy hasn’t justified a budget of a movie but there is not a studio or an independent alive that wouldn’t want take him if they could have him – and that’s the weird thing, there is not a financial equation. Everybody believes he’s a star and they will take that risk.”

Of course, you might say in hindsight, being cast as the arch-villain in an upcoming Batman directed by Christopher Nolan was bound to boost any decent actor’s star quotient. Common sense suggests that – which is why WME packaging agent Graham Taylor is at pains to tell creatives to apply level-headed logic based on basic market research and future assumptions. Opening a five-star restaurant in a town of one hundred people is probably ill-advised. So too is expecting anyone other than the handful of film art-collectors to back an expensive auteur-driven would-be masterpiece. His advice to WGA screenwriters is to wear their producers’ hats:

“Like anything, we have to put an army together. If you have relationships and can get to people directly then great, do it. If you can’t, then find a smart producer to partner up with or a filmmaker. You want to keep building your army to unlock a piece of financing, be it for development or production. Look, we live in a business of anomalies. People have that perception that it would be great to find the Dumb Denis in Deluth to write the magical check and at times people like that are unlocked, but if you are sane and you have an interesting movie and you can put an adult structure to it and talk to a financier actually to get them excited and touched by the material, and actually figure out what they actually need from it from the point of view of what is the budget, what is the actual risk on the movie.”

It all boils down to finding the model and then trying to sell into it. Or as Feig so succinctly put it: “know your beast: the genre, the budget, the kind of casting and then put your studio hat on. Ask yourself what would make me say ‘yes’ to this.

It’s a multi-layered question that we will now attempt to unpackage ourselves.